Levitating light bulb can power itself wirelessly

By Gene Ryan Briones on 07/05/2012

If you are interested in things that hover and fly, how about a levitating light bulb that can also power itself wirelessly? An electrical engineering student from the University of Queensland was able to develop a prototype of a levitating light bulb. Chris Rieger worked on the project for 6 months, combining previous researches conducted by other individuals. Rieger’s levitating light bulb is a combination of a magnetic wireless power transfer system and a magnetic levitating control system.

Rieger said that the most painful part of the project was the wireless power transfer functionality. He built an oscillator and a wireless power receiver circuit, which is a simple LC circuit tuned at exactly 1Mhz. Wireless power transfer is facilitated by a single large hoop of wire driven by alternating current at 1 MHz. This part of the system pulls 0.5A at 12V, bringing the whole of the consumption in at around 9 Watts. Then, a permanent magnet on the light assembly is used to levitate the light bulb. You can check out his fun project here.